Today in London, Jamie Thomas, Vice President of Tivoli Development and Strategy, IBM Software, discussed the critical role of technology in unleasing innovation to turn an explosion of data into new insights, transform business models for unprecedented rewards, and remove barriers between themselves and customers. Virtually everything is being enriched with new levels of computing power. The key takeaway: Now is the time to rethink IT to reinvent your business.

Rethinking IT in terms of reinventing business might seem a daunting endeavor with so many factors impacting the organization:

Technology

Market

Macro-economics

Regulations

Globalization

Socioeconomics

Environment

Geopolitics

While all of these factors influence one another, technology has become the number one external factor impacting organizations according to IBM’s latest CEO study. Over 60% of CIOs view cloud as critical to their plans to speed up service delivery. At the same time, organizations are increasingly leveraging mobile devices, further extended by BYOD policies. Over 700 million smart phones and tables will ship this year, a whopping 34% more than in 2011. Not to mention over 20B machine-centric devices already deployed that are essential to enabling business operations and business models.

The net? Efficient service delivery will generate 2.7 zetabytes of digital content in 2012 – an increase of 50% in one year.

Business and IT leaders must determine the impact of this data storm to their organization before mapping out a custom transition plan. You need a plan that will ensure the infrastructure is optimized to anticipate and react with agility to rapid changes, wherever they come from.

What won’t change from organization to organization are the four major challenges required for transformation to continuous innovation:

Speed up service delivery from months to minutes

Increase sales and promotions

Recognize and repair issues before impact

Shrink time to secure critical data

IT Leaders: do you have a plan to transform the IT shop from a cost center into a strategic hub for identifying growth opportunities?

CxOs: are you confident that your business is engaged in continuous innovation as you address changing priorities to keep from being left behind?

Hey Kids! It’s be a while since I posted on the Pulse blog. What’s been keeping me away? New job responsibilities outside [*GASP!*] the scope of social media. More on that another time. Today I have more important things to share with you.

For the past few years, IBM has been sending camera crews around the world to record as much as we can at our events. At some of the larger events, we also stream some of our sessions and interviews live. This is a key component of events today, in that it opens up the event to a much larger audience. Hint, hint.

For the first time, we are streaming live from Pulse Comes to You in London next week on May 30. The event will be attended by over 400 IBM clients and business partners, but we can expand that audience to virtually as many that want to be the first to hear our news next Wednesday. If you are still sleeping while we stream in real time, you can watch the replay while you have your morning coffee.

And if after reading the rest of this post you think my new professional assignment is the consequence of bad spelling, you might be right I'm just getting ready to ride in a car on the wrong side of the road.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

Key Note 1: Optimising the World's Infrastructure
Jamie Thomas, Vice President of Tivoli Strategy and Development.
Jamie will discuss the critical role of technology in unleashing innovation, including cloud, mobile enterprises, smarter physical infrastructures and security.

Key Note 3: IBM Watson goes to Work
Dale Lane, Software Developer – DeepQA (Watson), Emerging Technologies.
Dale will talk about the work that has been done to apply Watson’s technological breakthroughs to real-world problems, as well as some of the plans for Watson's future.